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Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1902, 10 September 1874, Page 2

A curious discovery is mentioned by the "Cornwall Chronicle" :—" On the rough passage of the Derwent, from Melbourne, on Friday night, the stokers, on conveying some coal from the bunkers to the fires, met with an unwieldy lump, and broke it up to make it more Convenient. Mr Kelly, xchief engineer, was surprised to find that, inside the mass of coal, and attached to one side where it split, was a package of bark not very far on the road to decay. The fibre seemed to be refined by its some thousands of years' con6nement in that dark space, and more suited for paper material than when it became embedded there. The question we would submit to geologists is. what preserved this portion of vegetable matter from decay, and prevented it from becoming, by mountainous pressure for unnumbered centuries, like the tree from which it was shed, a portion of the black diamond?" - ■•■ ■ -■■-■ ;